Lieutenant Colonel of the Civil Guard, David Oliva, upon leaving the National Court, April 12, 2023, in MadridFernando Sánchez / Europa Press
Confusion took over the internal forums of the civil guards in September 2022. The Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the beloved unit of the Civil Guard in the fight against drug trafficking in the Strait, OCON Sur, was dissolving to integrate into the different police forces. judicial authorities in the area.
The official version was always—and still is—that it was a temporary body that needed to end its interim status.
Just seven months later, in April 2023, the scandal of the investigation of his bosses for alleged links to drug trafficking, revelation of secrets and bribery broke out.
A report from the Internal Affairs Service of the Civil Guard (SAI) sent to the National Court that was investigating the case revealed now recognizes that its investigations were based on “unverified information.”
It is the expression that is repeated most in the report that the SAI sent to the investigating judge of the National Court.
The document was sent in October 2023, six months after the Court indicted Lieutenant Colonel David Oliva, head of that anti-drug unit, and two other agents, within an investigation promoted by the SAI itself and the central UDYCO. (Drug and Organized Crime Unit of the National Police).
That case of collaboration with drug traffickers ended up being filed, but led to another one for bribery and revelation of secrets that continues its course in a court in Parla (Madrid) and that the guards' defenses are now trying to overthrow by alleging that a possible nullity of evidence initials would invalidate those carried out a posteriori.
More information
The former heads of the anti-drug team dismantled by the Interior in the Strait denounce a setup against them
The revelation adds more noise to the death of OCON, a decision now also in question after the murder of two civil guards in the port of Barbate on February 9 and that various unions and local judicial sources have been denouncing new peaks for months. of drug trafficking activity.
OCON was created within the Civil Guard in 2018, in the midst of the Interior's reinforcement of its fight against drug trafficking.
For this, 150 agents were assigned who until September 2022 had exclusive dedication, due to many hours of investigation and large operations that generated suspicions among other groups of the armed institute and in the ranks of the drug trafficker, so harassed by the group that it even reached to threaten his boss, Lieutenant Colonel David Oliva.
“They had too many enemies,” a judicial source acknowledged to EL PAÍS, shortly after the investigation into Oliva became known.
The 29-page SAI report, advanced by
El Mundo
and to which EL PAÍS has had access, responds to a request for data made by the magistrate of the Investigative Court Number 1 of the National Court.
The judge received it after, already in May 2023, the Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office requested that the case be filed due to alleged implications with drug trafficking, the so-called Operation Varea, by Oliva, his lieutenant Javier Fuentes and another guard, considering that drug trafficking crime was declining.
In the document, the investigation officer acknowledges more than 35 times that all the evidence they have against Oliva and Fuentes is based on “unverified confidential information” and that its beginnings date back to June 2011, long before the events that occurred. were investigated in Operation Varea and that OCON itself was created.
The chronological succession of these clues begins, in fact, with Oliva's alleged links with a drug trafficker from Barbate when the agent was stationed in that area.
The temporary enumeration speaks of alleged meetings, stolen bundles of drugs, disappearances of wads of bills, tips and blind views of stashes.
It is also recognized that Oliva had collaborated with Abdellah El Haj, the powerful drug trafficker known as the
Messi of hashish,
and then also stated that the boss had tried to plan the murder of the civil guard.
But in none of these facts described succinctly and with hardly any details are hardly any verified data provided, as the SAI itself recognizes at every step.
“While it is true that destinations dedicated to the fight against organized crime entail the enmity of members of criminal organizations and that this animosity could well translate into the dissemination of false information (…);
It is also true that there are a multitude of investigation units dedicated to fighting drug trafficking (...) and no information of this nature has been received about them," the SAI justifies in a report in which it assures that it draws on sources from collaborators, other agents and from courts and prosecutors.
The investigations also cover a period of more than 10 years that exceeds the events investigated in the Varea operation, which began in March 2019 and in which the SAI and Udyco Central intended to link Oliva and Fuentes with the clan of the Ariza, a mafia that operated in the Tarifa area, where the second of those investigated lived.
“Someone linked to drug trafficking must have passed them information and the SAI bought the news from UDYCO,” says Jorge Gil Pacheco, Javier Fuentes' lawyer, about the investigations that ended up indicting his client.
The lawyer Gil Pacheco believes that the process was thus flawed, since the investigators relied on unverified information to get the judge of the National Court to authorize restrictive measures of rights, such as telephone taps.
“The judge has been deceived,” says the lawyer.
These interventions led, in turn, to alleged evidence being found that would demonstrate how Oliva tried to obtain information from the third lieutenant under investigation about whether he was being followed and that he promised him a transfer to OCON that materialized.
These are the crimes of revelation of secrets that are now ongoing in the Investigative Court number 5 of Parla and whose investigation has ended a few days ago.
Faced with this, the defenses of Oliva and Fuentes appeal to the doctrine of the fruit of the poisoned tree, which implies that any evidence obtained directly or indirectly of a nullity must also be considered null.
To do this, they have put together an expert report, published this Wednesday by
eldiario.es
, in which they have resorted to “computer engineers or topographers,” as Gil Pacheco explains, to try to dismantle the up to eight follow-ups that the researchers carried out to support the theory. that Oliva and Fuentes were linked to the Ariza clan.
In that report, those investigated argue that they used photos of supposed meetings that the SAI and UDYCO dated at different times or locations in places and times in which they claim to ensure with evidence that they were not there.
The defense offensive has so far had no impact in the Parla court, where the instructor did not accept the request for the SAI and UDYCO investigators to testify, as Gil Pacheco acknowledges.
“The judge told us that if we intended to obtain an annulment that we should go to the National Court,” says the lawyer who adds that he has requested the reopening of the case.
In addition, they have simultaneously filed a complaint in an Algeciras court against the investigators of the case.
Meanwhile, in the ranks of the Civil Guard, suspicions have returned, after the details of the expert defenses of those investigated were made known.
The wave of indignation that is still in force after the murder of the Barbate civil guards does not help, after different professional associations, agents and judicial sources have been warning for months of new peaks in drug activity and violence in the Strait.
Meanwhile, Oliva and Fuentes — active, but far from the front line of the fight against drug trafficking now — remain silent and only Fuentes' lawyer gives clues about their situation: “Our clients are good and orderly people.
“They are very disappointed with what has happened,” the lawyer emphasizes.
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